Ahead of Computex today, Qualcomm is announcing the Snapdragon C, its newest chips for Windows laptops. If you're excited about that, don't be. It's designed exclusively for laptops that cost as little as $300; in other words, it's made for the type of laptop that I'd never, ever recommend on XDA.

The first device to use the Snapdragon C is Acer's Aspire Go 15, which includes up to 8GB RAM, 512GB storage, and a 1080p display, all at a currently undisclosed price, as it will also launch on an undisclosed date. HP and Lenovo haven't announced anything, but they're confirmed as OEM partners.

Details on the Snapdragon C are scarce

Qualcomm provided almost no specs

Here's what we know for sure. The Snapdragon C is not an Oryon CPU, so it's not using the custom-designed cores that you'd find on Snapdragon X. It's using Kryo cores. It's based on a mobile chip, it's got an NPU, and that NPU isn't strong enough to support Copilot+. As a side note, that makes this the first computing chip to not support Copilot+ since the platform was introduced. Prior to now, Qualcomm's messaging has been about on-device AI at all price points.

The company has declined to acknowledge which mobile chip the Snapdragon C is based on, or even talk about any details at all like core count or clock speed. I've vowed to Qualcomm that I will find out this information, and I will publish it on XDA.

Snapdragon C details are set to be revealed in the coming months. We'll see more partner announcements as well.

The $300 laptop isn't what it used to be

And it was never much

I've reviewed hundreds of laptops, and I've never recommended a $300 Windows laptop to anyone. They've always been bad. The problem now is that it's worse.

You might have noticed that laptop prices are skyrocketing across the board. When I reviewed Microsoft's 13-inch Surface Laptop, it was $899, and I didn't recommend it then. Now it's $1,149.

Prices are increasing because of lots of market reasons, most notably the memory shortage. It's now one of the most expensive parts that you can put in a PC.

That gets even tighter if you're trying to do it on a budget. If a company is trying to hit a minimal price point like $300, while still making a profit, the RAM is eating up a lot of that. That means you're going to get a cheaper CPU, display, chassis, and everything else.

Right now, the Acer Aspire Go 15 can't be used as an example, because while the chip is targeted at $300, that doesn't mean that's what the product will cost, and we don't know the price of this one yet. Qualcomm said the Snapdragon X was for laptops $600 and up, and many of those came in at over $1,000.